You
have come back! I have seen your Wedding on the small screen.You were the
son of the town, who treats as an equal, and with the hat put on, the
formerly privileged ones. Together with your Susana, you represented the youth
that fights so that the right to live, to love, to the
family, to a right freedom can be recognized.

Before
your dynamic "artist style", before your aggressive and youthfully
mischievous energies, nobility represented the sad part of a frivolous, decrepit
class on the way to extinction.

I
have heard your famous monologue again. From the scene, you said more or less: "Then, who and what
am I, Figaro, before all these noble of
lineage, these bourgeois magistrates, who are everything and they do
everything, whereas, in fact, they are neither better nor worse than me? Barber,
matchmaker, pseudo-diplomatics advisory, yes, sirs, everything what you want! But in
addition I am, I feel I am, before all of them, something new, something strong. They think that I am only honest in a world of cardsharpers and ruffians.
I do not accept it: I rebel; I am a citizen !"

That
night, in Paris, a true tumult started at the theater. The stalls applauded, but
nobility, scandalized, put their fingers in the ears. At the same time, the king
shut
you up by sending you to prison. All in vain. From the stage and from the jail, you have jumped to the
square by shouting: "Gentlemen, the
comedy is over. The revolution has started!"

And,
in fact, the French Revolution broke out.

***

While
returning now, you will discover that millions of young people do everywhere what
you have done two centuries ago: they are compared with society and, seeing it
decrepit, they rebel and get out to the street.

There
in Liverpool, on a cellar walls, there are written these words: "The Beatles
were born here. Everything began here!". In case you don' t know, it refers
to four ruffled young singers, with the same
"artist style" as you, to whom the Queen of England, not only hasn' t
shut their mouths, but
has conferred them a high nobility title.

They
have sold millions of discs and made a lot of money. They have been made them applaud
by much more big audiencies than yours; they have caused anywhere in the world the
appearance of "bands", in which, accompanied by batteries and electric
guitars, young singers are shaken under the violent light of powerful
lamps, they drive mad psychologically on the spectators, inflaming them and
taking them to collective positions of frenetic participation.

***

Look
around! Many of these boys wear ponytails like you, and take care of their long
hears with an almost feminine worry: all kind of "shampoo",
"waves", curls, even "permanent" at lady hairdressing
salons. And how many beards! How many sideboards and big sideboards!

And
variety of dresses! A real strange mixture between old and new, feminine and
masculine, eastern and western! Sometimes, only a pair of blue-jeans
with a shirt or T-shirt or a fur jacket. Others, Renaissance stockings,
jackets similar to which the Napoleonic officials wore, with eighteenth-century
embroiders and shoes with ecclesiastical clasps. Sometimes, shocking colours and
flowered trousers and jackets, and, in addition, gypsy "coats".
Sometimes, suits voluntarily torn, that make think on a mythical city of
Barbonia. For the girls, miniskirt, shorts with maxi and midi coats and
other dressings.

What
do you think of this phenomenon? I feel incompetent and profane before it, and
also a bit amused and curious, without stopping being critical.

They
call it "young people music"; but I see that the record market
provides lots of money to a series of quick-witted old men. They invoke
spontaneity, non-conformism and
originality; in fact, astute "dress manufacturers" manipulate the
sector, calm and sovereign. They are considered themselves as revolutionaries,
but the meticulous cares excessively dedicated to the mop and the dress are
threatening them to become only into effeminate. The young women, when are
dressed in such a brief way, think on elegance and fashion. I want to be neither
Manichean nor Jansenist, but I sadly think that with it they are not helping the
young people' s virtue, at all.

Naturally,
these young people get on with "revolution", understood like a means of
finishing the exploitation of the man by the man.

Some
of them consider the reforms as inadequate and counter-productive, and justify
the revolution as the only way that leads to social justice.

Others,
however, wish fast and deep social reforms. Only like extreme policy and in very
serious and exceptional cases, they accept violence.

There
are others who free themselves of all scruple. "Violence - they say - is
justified by itself and it is necessary to make the
revolution for the revolution!"

Mao-Tse-Tung
has told the Chinese: "Let us place the cultural revolution, by making
a clean sweep of the bourgeois ideology that is still in Marxism!"

The
French Regis Debray has told the South Americans: "Your revolution cannot
be like it has been carried out in other countries, with a party at the
head; the guerrilla of all the people, this one is the true revolution!"

From
Mao and Debray, one has gone to Fidel Castro, to Giap and the French May
students: "The target of the student revolution- Cohn-Bendit said - is not to change society, but to destroy it".

Evidently,
dear Figaro, they have gone farther than you; they follow your teachers: Castro,
Che Guevara, Ho-Chi-Min, Giap, and dream about being guerrilla and desperate.
With good intentions, let us be understood; but, meanwhile, they are manipulated
by others; they do not realize it is an utopia to want to divide, radically and
without appeal, the good ones from the bad ones, loyalty from fraud, "progress"
from "standstill"; they do not understand that disorder brings with itself
"the spiral of violence", it delays progress and seeds dissatisfaction
and hatred.

***

And,
however, we can learn something
as much from you as from them. For example, this:
that parents, educators, employers, authorities, Priests, we must admit that we
have committed mistakes of method and that we have not paid enough attention to young people. That it is necessary to start again with spirit of humility
and true service, getting ready for a meticulous work, long and without
brightness.

In
a certain occasion, a half crazy guy broke the window and the objects of a
store by hitting them with his walking stick. The street filled immediately with
onlookers, who watched and commented. Shortly after, a little old man with a box
under his arm arrived at the store: he took off the jacket, took some glue, rope
and tools from the box, and with an infinite patience, he started repairing
smashed flowerpots and glasses. He finished after many hours. But this time,
nobody stopped to watch, no onlooker was interested on this work.

It
will be necessary to show us very open and understanding towards young people
and their failures. Failures, nevertheless, it is necessary to call them by
their name and it is necessary to introduce the Gospel "without glosses",
without cutting it to get a wish of popularity. Certain approvals do not produce
satisfaction: "Poor you - the Lord says - when all the men praise you,
because this was done by your parents with the false prophets" (Lk. 6, 26).
Young people, besides, wish the truth can be said to them and feel the love
behind the sincerely frank and admonishing word.

We
will also have to accept that young people are different from us, adults, in
the way of judging, behaving, loving and praying. They also have - as you had, Figaro
- a word to say to the world, a word worthy to be heard with respect.

It
will be necessary to share with them the task of leading the society through
ways of progress. With a warning: that they step more on the accelerator, and we,
however, put more on the brake. That, in any case, the problem of young people
cannot be separated from the problem of society; their crisis is, partly, crisis
of society.

***

Figaro!
Your knew how to attack sharply abuses and weaknesses, but you were not so sharp
when proposing solutions. I find right - putting aside exagerations - your
critic of society; but it is necessary the therapy.

However,
for young people of today and all the times, the therapy exists: to make them
see that the right answer to the questions that fill them was given by Christ,
more than by Marcuse, or Debray, or Mao.

Do
they want brotherhood? Christ said: all you are brothers. Are they thirsty of
authenticity? Christ reprimanded every hypocrisy strongly. Are they against
authoritarianism and despotism? Christ said that authority is a service. Are they
against formalism? Christ condemned prayers said mechanically, charity made to
be noticed, charity for interest. Do they want religious freedom? Christ, on one
hand, wanted that "all the men... can arrive at the knowledge of the truth",
and by another one, he did not impose anything by force, did not prevent the
opposite propaganda, He allowed the apostles' abandoning, Peter' s negations,
Thomas' doubt. He asked and asks to be accepted as a man and as God, it is true,
but not before we have seen and verified that He deserves our acceptance, not
without a free election.

***

What
do you say about all this? Figaro' s protest, plus Christ' s proposal,
won' t they- together- be able to help
as much the young
people as the society? I think so, full of hope.

April
1972

*
FIGARO
,
personage
from the famous comedies of the French writer Beaumarchais (1732
-1799): The Barber of Seville, The Wedding of Figaro. Symbol
of the youth that fights so that the right of living, loving, to the family
and freedom can be recognized.